Parents aren’t prone to taking risks when it comes to the safety of their children, which is why warnings about a kidnapping syndicate in Cape Town have many on edge.

The latest incident occurred in Somerset Mall, when a mother caught a blonde woman taking photos of her daughter and niece. She confronted the woman and found pictures of both on her phone, and her Facebook post detailing the incident has been shared more than 20 000 times.

This from IOL:

Her warning comes in the wake of posts on social media warning about a child kidnapping syndicate operating in the Western Cape.

A woman with long blonde hair, driving a blue or green Nissan Micra, was spotted taking photos of children outside school. There’s also a warning about a white Quantum taxi parked outside schools, and that drug addicts were being paid thousands of rands to kidnap children.

The SAPS official Facebook page has rubbished the posts as a hoax.

But a Strand mother reported that her 10-year old daughter was nearly snatched outside Rusthof Primary School on Wednesday, allegedly by a blonde woman and black man in a blue/green car.

Swanepoel Dyers said she was in the mall with her mother, sisters and their young daughters over the weekend. She said they noticed the woman snapping pictures of the girls, but she moved away from them when she saw they stared at her.

As they left the mall, the woman tried to take more pictures. Swanepoel Dyers then decided to turn around, and peeped over the woman’s shoulder.

“That is when I saw that she actually had pictures of our children on her phone! I was so shocked! I asked her why she was taking pictures of our children and she claimed she was a “street photographer”. What a load of crap!

“On the photos she took, you could see that she was zooming in on the eldest two of 12 years old.”

The sisters called mall security, and told the woman to delete the photos. Swanepoel Dyers’s sister said she took the phone to check if the photos were gone.

“This is when I saw that it wasn’t just only our children’s pictures on there, there’s other children’s as well, age group 12-16 years different races in different areas, teenagers sitting by the beach or passing by a shop, and it’s not the type of photos a decent photographer would take.”

She said as they drove away, a man came up to them, peeked into the car and checked their registration number before running off.

There seems to be some confusion around how the woman at Somerset Mall came to be released. Lizelle Louw, Somerset Mall’s Marketing Manager, says the incident was reported to police – who then released her after questioning.

That’s in contrast to Captain FC van Wyk, who says the incident at Somerset Mall has not been reported to SAPS.

I find it worrying that we can’t even get that part of the puzzle right, let alone give due diligence to Swanepoel Dyers’ claims.

[source:iol]